


the waffle house blues

by akire_yta, Heavenward (PreludeInZ)



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Brotherly Banter, Brotherly Bonding, Brotherly Bullshit, Family, Gen, Hurricanes, Sideways conversations about sexuality, The Waffle Index, Waffles, breakfasts of choice, food fight mention, growing up or not, mom and dad and mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-11
Updated: 2016-11-11
Packaged: 2018-08-30 07:51:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8524834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akire_yta/pseuds/akire_yta, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/Heavenward
Summary: Wherein a bunch of boys sit around a restaurant, eating breakfast food and dozing on and off and talking about life. Round robin with the lovely and wonderful akire-yta <3





	

The fact that all five of them are on the ground marks it as a special occasion. It’s only a hurricane and not—at least not according to Virgil and Gordon—even a bad one. John had been off-rotation when the call had come in, and all five of them in Thunderbird 2’s cockpit had actually been a historic first.

And now the five of them are knee deep in the slowly receding storm surge, tired and hungry, and staring at the brightly lit diner across the street, ringed around with sandbags, an oasis of…well, if not dryness, strictly speaking, then at least nothing more than damp. Scott’s a few feet off, making a call to their GDF liaison, and everyone’s just waiting for him to finish up.

And then: waffles!

John, predictably and at least partially by merit of inexperience, is the skeptic. He looks dubiously at the structure, the only spot of light down the whole street. His admission is reluctant, almost embarrassed, and he shakes his head as he says, “I don’t get it.”

There’s a grin in Gordon’s voice as he punches John in the arm, light and affectionate. “I mean, there’s not much to get. They’re open. Toldja they would be.” The blond has his wetsuit pulled open at the collar, and the humidity’s got his blond hair curling at the tips, “Wasn’t much of a hurricane.”

“ _How_ , though?”

Virgil’s got an arm around Alan’s shoulders, casual, an excuse to let his dog-tired little brother lean against him, yawning and only half paying attention to his surroundings. “Generators. Non-perishables. They’re well-prepared.”

“They’re a _restaurant_.”

“Yeah, and people like us are _really hungry_.”

“But…”

“It’s like their claim to fame, J. They don’t close if they can help it. This part of the country, storms like this are just par for the course. Now, are you hungry or not?“

“Well, yeah, but…”

It’s Scott who settles the discussion, slogging over through the knee deep water and giving John a shove towards the door. “C'mon, Coppertop, time to pop your post-hurricane waffle house cherry. It’s traditional. _They’re_ still open, _we’re_ still standing, and we are therefore honor bound by sacred duty to attempt to eat everything last damn thing they’ve got. Do your part, Johnny.” And then, theatrically, with a hand on his brother’s shoulder, Scott declares, “Thunderbirds are go!”

* * *

 John is wedged into the booth in between Gordon and Alan.  Gordon has sprawled somehow, cutting off any hope of escape, and Alan has keeled over slightly to lean heavily against John.  Passing bands of rain slap against the glass window next to Alan, and beyond that, the gloom had swallowed any sign of life or movement.

Across the table, Scott is grinning an older brother’s grin at him as Virgil intently studies the menu.  “Well,” John says, trying to sit up straight on the uncomfortable bench.  He aches all over, and can already feel the stiffness settling into muscles unused to the cold and the wet and the work.  “This is appropriately liminal.”

“That’s the spirit,” Virgil says, turning the laminated card over to study the other side. He's too cheerful for someone who had been working heavy rescue for the past twelve hours.  

“You’ll feel better after a stack of waffles,” Scott adds.  He’s sprawled over his end of bench seat, but has managed to be slightly more debonair than Gordon’s ungainly tangle of limbs.

“I’d feel better after a hot shower, a change of uniform, and microgravity,” John shoots back.  He twitches, feeling the gritty uncomfortableness of sand trapped between uniform and skin.

Next to him, Alan snuffles awake, rolling to sit upright though his eyes are barely open.  “No waffles in space.”  

John turns to stare at his youngest brother.  “Et tu, Alan?”

Scott's openly grinning at him now, but the crease around his eyes shifts subtly as the waitress came over with the coffee.  “Should I just leave the pot with you boys?” she asks, looking over their salt-stained uniforms.

“Yes please, ma’am,” Scott replies, all charm and easy grace.  “And five stacks of waffles with one of every side.”

Virgil hands up his menu.  “Make that two.”

“Do we get a say in this?” John asks as their waitress disappears into the kitchen again.

“No,” four voices tell him in perfect synchronicity.

* * *

A remarkably short span of time passes. Quick enough that John doesn't actually have time to remark on it, because suddenly there are plates being handed around and syrup being procured and coffee being topped up.

They tuck in. Round one goes about as planned, in relative silence. John swaps his waffles for Alan's eggs and a slice of bacon, citing personal preference. Gordon steals Virgil's orange juice in full view of everyone else, downs it and immediately protests his innocence. Another pot of coffee arrives to weary cheers and gratitude. But mostly they all just eat. Everyone’s starving, after all. Before their plates are even completely clear, they've all already re-upped their orders, minor variations across the board.

Round two, a bit slower, a bit more leisurely. The spread is impressive, though the eggs are powdered and the coffee is instant and honestly the menu’s a little bit limited—they don’t, for example, have the capacity to make anything in the neighbourhood of a breakfast burger, and the hashbrowns had all gone soft. There’s no ham, but the bacon’s been reconstituted, and Virgil had even been willing to chance the sausage. Scott’s procured a six egg omelette. By round three, John’s beginning to worry that they’re going to need evac of their own, but then Gordon gets his attention, dinging his fork on the side of his sunshiney glass, full as it is with something doing a credible impression of orange juice.

“Waffles,” Gordon informs his older brother, grinning like a jackal, as he makes his contribution to the night’s initiation, “are like sex.”

And maybe any other night John wouldn’t rise to it, but he’s got an arm around Alan’s shoulders and the youngest is snoring into his armpit, so it’s not like he needs to tread around the baby’s delicate sensibilities. And sometimes Gordon needs to be taught better than to tangle with him. So John arches an eyebrow and reaches for his cup of coffee. “In that in both cases I would prefer to be having pancakes?”

Eyeroll. “No.”

Virgil’s grinning. Scott’s dozing, but pretending not to, with his chin propped on his hand and his eyes half-lidded, bemused as he watches the duel between Thunderbirds Four and Five, so rarely in one another’s company.

“In that they both represent a certain degree of unnecessary stickiness?”

“Dude, syrup is in no way unnecessary, syrup is _requisite_.” Gordon demonstrates this point by picking up a little glass jar of the sort of high-fructose death that he’d never so much as _glance_ at, on a night not spent having wrangled a hurricane. He lifts it high and pours it out in a glistening golden ribbon, such that it pools and plummets down the sides of a six inch stack of waffles.

His third, by John’s count, stolen from Alan. He shifts carefully and shotguns bitter black caffeine before he inquires, “Are waffles like sex because you can’t fathom how anyone else could possibly say ‘Nah, thanks. I’m good, actually.‘ Because—”

Gordon fires a kick across the underside of the table and catches his brother in the shin, cuts him off. “—in that _even when they’re lousy_ , they’re still pretty fuckin’ amazing, is what I was _gonna_ say, Jaybird. Sheesh. Un _clench_.”

“Language!” Scott rouses from his state of half-awakeness to growl at the blond, in public, in uniform and technically still on the clock as they are. He glances at the waitress, circling around their table like a shark. “Sorry, ma’am.”

There’s just a grin from the waitress, and not in Scott’s direction. It’s the sort of salacious type of smile in Gordon’s direction that seems to indicate a shared opinion about waffles.

John’s rubbing his shin beneath the table, muttering curses of his own. “Cute,” he comments dryly. “I think the more apt comparison, in your tragic case, is that sex is like air, and only worth mentioning when you’re not _getting_ any.”

If this was meant as a dig at his brother, it doesn’t land, because Gordon only grins and plunges his fork deep into the stack of crispy golden waffles on his plate. “Yeah, maybe. ‘Least I got waffles, though.”

* * *

Scott is feeling warm, and full, and if he’s a bit itchy from the drying salt, well, he’s been covered in worse before.

Outside, the rain has settled into a soothing pattern, white noise under the gentle bickering between Four and Five.  Scott maybe drifts for a bit, because between one blink and the next, Gordon’s stack of waffles has disappeared into a sticky puddle, and he’s holding out the last quarter of his last waffle, almost drooping with syrup, to John.

Who takes it.

That alone is enough to jerk Scott fully awake, the movement catching Virgil’s attention from where he’d been sat, mechanically working through his own plate with knife, fork, and gusto.

They both watch, almost spellbound, as John tentatively _licks_ a drip off the corner of the waffle before taking a more substantial bite.

His expression is better suited to a wine taster, or a gourmet with a new dish, than a bedraggled man in a filthy uniform eating reconstituted eggs and syrup-soaked waffles in a Waffle House after a hurricane. He chews slowly, thoughtfully, taking his time.   “Well?” Gordon asks as the silence stretched to a knife’s edge.

John shrugs, dropping the remains onto his own plate before fastidiously wiping his fingers clean.  “Not terrible,” he admits.  ‘I just don’t see the huge appeal.”  He pushes his own plate, the half-eaten quarter slapped right in the centre on top of the smears of grease, along the table to nestle up against Gordon’s collections of plates.  “You enjoy, I’m good.”

Gordon makes a low noise in his throat.  “You’re killing me, Smalls,” he moans, grins when he gets a small laugh out of John.

“You just enjoy your stickiness.  Over there,” John adds.  “Well away from me, please.”

“Seriously?” Virgil asks, shoving another bite into his mouth.

“What he said,” Scott agrees, gesturing with his thumb at Virgil before stealing the last bit of bacon off Virgil’s plate.  Virgil swats him away, but doesn’t stab him, so Scott calls this a win.

Chewing on his prize, Scott happens to look up again, just in time to catch John glance at Gordon and receive an tiny nod in return.  

Scott had heard Virgil swear once that, occasionally, when they were all tired and strung out and exhausted, that John and Gordon sometimes found a strange synchronicity, lining up in a way that was borderline telepathic.

Scott suddenly believes him as he's faced with two matching grins.  “So, omelette boy,” John begins, leaning in.  

“When was the last time you enjoyed a nice big sticky plate of waffles, hmm?” Gordon finishes.  The bastard even waggles his eyebrows.

John's resting his chin on his hands, eyes dancing.  Gordon is even less subtle, openly grinning.  Scott panicks slightly and shoves a now-congealing forkful of omelette into his mouth.

Virgil, the traitor, puts down his own fork.  “It’s been a while, hasn’t it, Scotty. Come on, you can tell us.”

Scott's outnumbered, outgunned, and out of omelette.  “Shit,” he mutters.

* * *

 But, well. He can step around that one easily enough. Alan snorts into John’s shoulder and Scott rolls his eyes fondly, picks his angle and lines up his shot.

“Umm _mm_. Paris. Yeah. _Yeah_ , Paris.” Scott’s eyes get dreamy and he starts to spiral off onto a tangent, not entirely off the intended topic, but near enough to the mark that he thinks it probably counts. “Mmm. _Crepe Suzette_. On the Rue de la Roquette, four or five years back. Dunno, can’t remember. Summer. Ummmm, late spring. Maybe. I forget. And I don’t actually remember why I was in Paris. But oh, man. _Man_. Crepes as light as _air,_ sugar and booze and _fire_. Lit it up right at the table, honest to god. Actually a dessert, I got told. Not s'posed to be breakfast, but I’m worth like eighty billion dollars, I can eat what I want. Anyway. Still. Classiest thing I ever ate, I think.” He pauses, and then looking directly at John, casually concludes, “That is, second only to Reinette, who was a _lovely_ dining companion, and had the _pain au chocolat_. Delicious.”

Gordon might not know how to get at John, but Scott always has. His brother’s cheeks flush slightly and John clears his throat. “ _Right_. Well—”

Virgil tags in, interrupts with his own tale of breakfasty conquest. “Wait, nah, me next. ‘Cuz Eggs Benedict. Right? In Chicago, can’t remember where. Some hotel, was an engineering conference that Dad made me go to. I mean, it was interesting! I had fun. But I was only twenty-one and it was all kinda over my head, and I had to go all by myself, because _someone_ ,” John gets kicked under the table again, very unfairly “—wouldn’t scrub their stupid homework for the weekend.”

“My _midterm exams_ ,” John protests, remembering better than Virgil does the week in question, apparently.

“Oh, as though you didn’t have a 3.8 GPA, like you couldn’t have taken the hit. We could’ve bonded in a brotherly fashion. Anyway. It was on the last Sunday the hotel did this all day breakfast, brunchy lunch thing, and I guess technically it was lunch. But anyway. Yeah. Eggs Benedict bar. Made to order. Sourdough English muffin, smoked salmon, capers and hollandaise. I went back like four times. _Mmm_. I should go back again. Gotta be an annual thing. Probably appreciate it more this time around. And I bet Brains’d go with me.”

“Oh mm _hmm,_ yeah'huh, I _bet_ ,” Gordon mutters, but he’s grinning as he says it. Virgil’s the engineer, but Gordon’s the one who’s constructed a tiny pyramid out of the little coffee creamers. He knocks them over and starts to stack them again, straight up this time. “My turn? My turn. Also French, less classy than Scooter, the smarmy bastard.” Gordon’s due to crash soon, and it’s evident in the way his language starts to blend and blur, starts to bleed together. “Croque Madame. Monsieur. Can’t remember. Version with the egg on top. Translation: Mister and/or Missus Crunchy, which is a fact I’ve always enjoyed. Anyway. Grilled ham sandwich covered in cheese sauce, fried egg on top, over easy. Best thing ever, oh my god. Wish I could remember which one has the egg.”

John coughs, shifts ever so slightly and notes with some distaste that Alan’s started to drool, a ribbon of saliva right down the arm of his uniform. He doesn’t know why he felt the need to comment, but does so anyway, “I mean. Addition of eggs, stands to reason it would be Madame. I mean, I think.”

Scott scoffs. “Right, uh huh. 'Cuz you’d know. You’re up, by the way.” Gordon elbows him, being closest, and Virgil kicks his knee beneath the table again. Gently, though. They’re all sore and now they’re all full, and _tired_ on top of that, so it’s starting to show. “Anything memorable you wanna mention, Johnny?”

“Breakfast wise?”

“Sure, that’s what we’re talking about.”

It’s not and John knows it, and knows his answer anyway. Closes his eyes and tilts his head back against the ridge of the booth behind him, smiles serenely, and answers, “Bowl of oatmeal. Half pat of butter. Brown sugar, cinnamon. Raisins. Splash of cream if it’s a weekend and I feel fancy. I don’t often feel fancy. In fact, almost never.”

The chorus of protesting groans and expletives from around the table is enough to wake Alan who jars awake with a start and a garbled slurp of saliva and a bewildered, “Wha! Wahtzit? Who’s…oh. What’re we talkin’ about?”

John’s arm drops securely around his little brother’s shoulders again, gives a comforting squeeze. “Nothing really, Al. Breakfast of choice.”

“Oh,” Alan answers blearily, and yawns, before he hunches forward over the table and folds his head on his arms. “Bowl of fruit loops,” he mutters, and then drops right back off again.

* * *

It’s a one-all draw, and the four eldest all know it.  Usually it’s Gordon who would either crack a joke or not know to leave well enough alone.

This time, it’s Virgil.

“Oatmeal,” he asks slowly, like he is putting words around a vague idea in his head.  “Comfort food.  Hugs in a bowl.”

John tilts his mug, frowning at the low tide.  He nods as Scott holds out the coffee pot.  “Maybe.  What of it?”

“Nothing,” Virgil shrugs, wiping his palms on his thighs, not so much cleaning them as mingling the grease with the dirt and the salt.  “Just wondering,” he adds slowly, eyes flicking briefly to Alan.  “If you craved oatmeal more than on weekends.”

John pauses, mug halfway to his lips, seeing the long road down that line of conversation.  “No,” he says flatly, cuts it off before it can start.  “I can confirm, my oatmeal needs are completely satisfied.”

Next to him, Gordon starts sniggering, that punch-drunk laughter he gets when his brain is drowning in fatigue.  “I just got a mental picture of you being chased by, like, this big guy made of oatmeal, with, like, two raisins for eyes.”  His arms lift and drop, half-miming a lumbering creature reaching for a hug.  “Rawr!  Oatmeal, rawr.”

Scott, Virgil and John all stare at him.  “Are you okay, bro?”  Virgil asks finally, reaching across the table to take Gordon’s temperature.

Gordon bats him away.  “Oatmeal Man, the hero John will tolerate.”  He collapses, face down, still giggling, his forehead bouncing off his forearms hard enough to jolt Alan awake.

“Whaddya talkin’ about?” Alan slurs as Gordon sighs into the table.

John pats Alan’s shoulder.  “I think Gordon just invented a new superhero.”  He pauses, eyes going distant for a moment.  “Or, on reflection, possible supervillain.  Oatmeal isn’t particularly heroic.”

Scott shakes his head, reaching for the coffee pot.  “Okay,” he said, dragging out the vowel. “Now I’m picturing Gordon’s Oatmeal Man with a cape.  Thank you, everyone.”  John sketches a little salute before nudging his coffee mug meaningfully back towards Scott.  “I’m cutting you off,” Scott tells him, nudging it back. “You need some red blood cells in your caffeine supply, and to sleep sometime this year.”

“Sleep is for the weak,” John retorts, nudges his mug forward again.

Gordon wakes up just enough to punch John in the thigh.  “Sleep,” he mutters, folding back down again.

Virgil laughs.  “Behave, children,” he intoned.  “Or I’m turning this waffle-house around.”

Gordon sat up like a marionette with all his strings pulled.  “Wow.  That actually sounded scarily like dad.”

Everyone freezes, a micropause that lasts an eon. 

* * *

It’s exactly the sort of thing Dad would’ve said, too.

“Dad used to make pancakes.”

And John doesn’t know why he says it, doesn’t know if he’s just completing an obvious logical circuit or if he’s been led up to this. Because his brothers do that, sometimes, feint and parry him into the corner of a conversation like this, trip him up in ways he never expects and send him stumbling.

He’s stumbling now, as he can’t help but continue, because maybe being sandwiched between an unapologetically drowsy Alan and crashing-loudly-and-spectacularly Gordon, some of the exhaustion is starting to bleed over. Maybe he’s getting just a little bit liminal himself. “D'you guys remember? Back…Kansas. Sunday mornings. Eggs and bacon and juice and toast and just Dad, making pancakes the whole way through breakfast. I don’t remember if he ever sat down.”

“Chocolate chips and blueberries,” Scott comments, and pours the last of the coffee into his own cup, leaves none for his brother.

“No blueberries, after mom,” Virgil corrects.

John had forgotten that. “No pancakes for a long while, either.”

“Mm.”

Gordon’s got his head on his arms again and he snores and John wonders if he’s faking. It’s hard to tell, with Gordon. Sometimes Gordon just decides he wants to check out. “He started back up, though. Eventually. Right? Because I remember coming home, Sundays, on the Island, and—”

“Dad’d kick Grandma out of the kitchen. Small mercies.” It’s notable that Scott’s taken the last cup of coffee, but isn’t drinking it. Probably he only has it so that John doesn’t, which is unfair, but also a tactically sound sort of move. John closes his eyes and tips his head back again. Scott’s probably right, anyway. Probably he doesn’t need it.

“Heh. Yeah. Poor Grandma, I know she _tries_ , but—”

Virgil puts on the Dad Voice again, and, “C'mon now, Mom, I’ve got it, go put your feet up.”

Dead air.

And John wishes he’d kept his eyes open. Because in that moment, in the absence of evidence he forgets all the evidence of absence, and his Dad’s just there again, and there’s a saltwater sting in his eyes, unfortunately not accountable to the seawater still flooding the streets outside.

“Jesus,” he mutters, and pinches his thumbs at the bridge of his nose, sniffles and coughs and covers. Shakes his head. “Okay. Maybe you don’t do that again, hey Virg? It’s…been a long day.”

* * *

Virgil doesn’t answer for a very long time.  When he does speak, his voice has changed from an echo of their father’s to an echo of the boy he used to be.  “I miss them.”

John still has his eyes closed, but he can hear Scott’s deep exhale, the hard sound of denial that had been for months Scott’s unofficial fortress when talking about the past.  “We all do, Virg,” he acknowledges at last.

John’s still got his hand pressed to his face, muting the already low lights. With the rain against the window muffling any distant sound, it felt like they were alone, a tiny puddle of light and warmth in a cold universe where nothing bad could ever get them.  “Sometimes I worry,” he confesses, mindful of Alan and Gordon on either side.  “I forget things.  About them both now.”  He sighs and forces himself to look across the table.  “Like the blueberries.”

“John,” Scott says, half-warning, half-plea.

John ignores him as he scoffs quietly, upset mostly with himself.  “We used to go for walks, and pick wild ones, she loved them so much.  How could I forget about the damn blueberries?”

Scott doesn’t scold his language.  He’s looking down, his fingers tracing the rim of his cooling cup of coffee.  “I remember, mom used to sing this song. I can still hum the melody.  But I can’t remember the words.”

It’s the first time in forever that John can remember Scott talking about her. Even when dad was still alive–especially when dad was alive–Scott would never talk about her, rarely let himself be drawn on the subject.

As his finger traces a circle, Scott begins to hum, tentative and quiet.

Next to him, Virgil turns to prop his head up, his elbow on the table and his folded fist resting against his cheek.  As Scott’s humming fades, he begins to sing.

“Swing High, Swing High, away we go, up to the trees , where the breezes blow,” he starts

John winces, even as he finishes the rhyme.  “Where the birdies nest and play all day. And all the world is bright and gay.”

Next to John, Gordon’s snores have gone silent.  “What wassat?” he asks, his words sleep-slurred and his voice muffled by how he had his face buried in his arms.

“Old nursery rhyme,” Virgil answers, after a long pause where John and Scott both stared at their plates.

“’s nice,” Gordon mumbles, twitching to settle himself more comfortably.  “Soothing.”

John can’t help himself.  “Do you remember it?”

Gordon turns his head to rest his other cheek against his forearm, his face away from John. “Never heard it before.”

* * *

 Alan feels it, the way the breath catches in his big brother’s chest. That little hitch, the soft, sad little sigh that follows it.

They’re all here, all in the same place, and they’ve all just done the same thing, like so many times before—but John’s still a rookie at the aftermath. John’s usually held apart, John’s not usually here. He’s not used to getting caught in the quiet, exhausted, emotionally raw place that is the in-between, the space after the disaster, but before they get to go home.

This is the place where they talk about life and love and sex and death, right and wrong, Mom and Dad. All the adult things. The place where they turn the world over, roll it back and forth between each other, talk about the things they’re afraid of, the things they don’t understand. This is the place where Alan closes his eyes and snoozes and snores and drools and pretends to sleep, because if he pretends to sleep then _they_ can pretend he’s still just a kid, and can pretend to be adults themselves, even though Alan knows better.

Because Alan knows that Gordon’s only just twenty-one, and he was ten when their mother died, and so he’s been without their mother for longer now than he’d been with her. And Alan knows that bugs him. Alan knows he makes things up, so he can pretend he hasn’t forgotten. Knows that sometimes Gordon wants to pretend to be a kid more than he wants to pretend to be an adult, because when he was a kid, he never could’ve imagined forgetting his parents.

And Alan knows that _Virgil_ knows exactly how much he sounds like Dad, and that’s the reason his voice is so often so quiet, so careful. It’s the reason he doesn’t snap orders off the way he could—the way he probably _should_ , sometimes—the way he doesn’t press his advantage when he pulls Scott up short, or digs at the part of John that should open up more often, or gets Gordon to straighten up and fly right. That gets Alan to do his homework.

He knows that John doesn’t want to be here, because this is exactly what John would have been afraid of—not of anything going wrong, or of failing to keep up with the rest of his family, with his boots on the ground and doing the work—but of the closeness that goes with it, the vulnerability and the necessary trust. The incursion beyond his carefully constructed walls, and the way that damp gets into them, seeps into the mortar and makes him crumble, or makes him think he will, anyway.

And Alan knows that Scott loves his brothers, loves all of them so fully and so fiercely, but in moments like these, Scott’s scared it won’t be enough. Scared that it’s not enough to love when he’s being asked to lead, and scared that the right words won’t come, to let the people he loves know that it’ll all be all right. That they’re together and that they always will be, and that that’s enough because it _has_ to be. Scott’s not the only one who still wishes to hear Dad’s voice, but he’s the one who remembers it best.

And Alan’s the kid brother. Alan’s the one they’re all trying to protect, but Alan’s sixteen and he’s still in high school, and he’s just read _The Catcher in the Rye_.

He can’t really remember any of them ever being that young. Young enough to read _The Catcher in the Rye_ and get hit right in the heart with it. He wonders if any of them remember reading it. Wonders what all of them took away. Because Alan’s pretty sure he knows he knows better than any of his brothers what that book was about.

So with a languid, theatrical yawn, he unsticks his face from John’s shoulder, sits up and stretches, lets them all pretend they haven’t just turned into a little puddle of grief and longing. Very deliberately, Alan surveys the tablescape, the scattered plates and the half full coffee cups and the little pitchers of syrup. Ketchup and salt and pepper, tiny cups of cream, a sugar bowl. Artificial sweetener packets. A half stack of waffles that Virgil probably thinks he’s still going to finish.

Alan reaches for the ketchup bottle—plastic, not glass, c'mon Waffle House, try and be at least a _little_ classy—pops the top open, and fires an arc of red across the table, right at Scooter’s face.

* * *

 

Good aim and Scott’s preference to strike hard but strike once limits the damage.  

Virgil immediately fetching a couple of cloths from the server behind the counter so they could clean up their own mess meant that the staff found the food fight _amusing_  rather than annoying.  Or that may have had something to do with Scott’s tip, which was an order of magnitude larger than the cost of the meal.

They gather together in the entrance area, more a closed off porch than anything.  No-one seems willing to be the first to step back out into the rain. 

“So Scott,” Gordon begins, rubbing a thin paper napkin vigorously against his cheek.  “Since when have you been carrying several thousand dollars in hard currency in your gear pocket?”

Virgil slings his arm over Gordon’s shoulders, teaming up to grin evilly at Scott.  “Is there a bunch of singles in there?  Tell me there’s a bunch of singles.”

Scott straightens his uniform with a dignified air.  “I want you all to remember who just bought you breakfast and _shut up_.”

Alan stands next to John, possibly the only one close enough to hear him laugh under his breath.  Alan swuings his head around, taking in the warmth high on John’s cheeks, the tired smile.  John catches him looking, and reaches over to ruffle his hair.  “Come on, Allie,” he says. “Let’s go.”

The rain is cold, but inside T2 is warm enough once Virgil starts the engines and lifts the big bird up through the last dregs of the storm.

It's night above the clouds, the sky full of stars.  Alan leans forward over Gordon’s shoulder, automatically scanning the horizon for Polaris.  “You know,” John says from behind him.  “I was thinking, I’ve kind of let the weekly schedule slide a bit, with it being so busy.  But now I’ve got Eos to help, I was thinking…”  He pauses, choosing his words with care.  “We should get back into the half day off schedule that Dad tried to implement.  Remember that, Scott?”

Scott nods.  “Sunday mornings,” he agrees.  “You could come down the night before,” he adds, testing the waters.

“We could do family breakfast,” Virgil chimes in, eyes on his instruments.

John nods, voice quiet.  “I think I know where her old recipe for blueberry pancakes is.”

Alan turns away from the stars. “That sounds great, John,” he answers, for all of them.

The cockpit falls silent, everyone lost in their own thoughts. Alan rolls his eyes.  “By the way, bro, you’ve got ketchup on your nose.”

Laughter fills the cabin as John almost crosses his eyes trying to wipe it off.  Alan turns back to look forward through the windscreen, towards the horizon where the faint glow of dawn breaks across a tattered sky.

It looks ready to be a beautiful day.

 


End file.
